Vijay Mallya, who built a substantial part of his fortune on Kingfisher beer, launched Kingfisher Airlines in 2003.
Highlights
- Congress asks government how it plans to make Mallya return
- Mallya flew to London on March 2; his airline owes a billion dollars
- BJP says Congress administration pressured banks to give Mallya loans
Vijay Mallya, 60, is a "Congress baby", the ruling BJP said about the tycoon who has controversially left India as banks ratchet up efforts to collect the nearly billion dollars that his Kingfisher Airlines.
"Mallya is a Congress' baby. When his company (Kingfisher Airline) was on the verge of closure, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested such private companies should be helped. The government pushed banks to give him a package of Rs. 3,100 crore," BJP National Secretary Shrikant Sharma alleged, adding Congress should come clean on its "deals" with him.
Mr Mallya's unhindered exit from Delhi to London on March 2 instigated political recriminations, with the Congress accusing the government of "criminal conspiracy", and the BJP retaliating that it was on the Congress' watch that the pony-tailed, earring-wearing liquor baron was bestowed one large loan after another by state-run banks, even as the scale of his airline's disastrous finances were in plain sight.
After initially declaring on Twitter that he was not absconding, Mr Mallya told the Sunday Guardian paper over the weekend that "the time is not right" for his return. He has been ordered to appear in Mumbai for questioning in a money-laundering case on Friday; his office has refused to comment on whether he will comply.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has told parliament that when Mr Mallya flew to London, a consortium of banks had not yet approached the Supreme Court to stop him from traveling aboard.
The CBI, which has been investigating Mr Mallya's loans and the banks who sanctioned them since late last year, has admitted that after initially asking for him to be stopped at airports, it downgraded restrictions to seek only an alert if he boarded a foreign flight.
Mr Mallya, who built a substantial part of his fortune on Kingfisher beer, launched Kingfisher Airlines in 2003. Its license was cancelled by the government 10 years later, amid financial distress that included not paying employees for months.